The Lakers Coming in: With only 15 games left in the season, now is the time for this team to start to sort out some of its issues and find its stride. However, this is easier said than done. The Lakers’ bench is struggling and Mike Brown is still seeking out lineups that work. Ramon Sessions has looked less comfortable in the last two games, scoring a total of 14 points while only taking 10 shots over his 60 minutes of game action. Kobe’s also struggling with his jumper and the Lakers have reverted back to looking to isolate him more on the wing, mid post, and the top of the key. Add in the up and down play of the Lakers SF’s, the big men being a bit more inconsistent in the past week, and the defense not looking as in sync and the Lakers look worse than usual.

There are no easy answers right now. The team is trying to integrate a key player on the fly and his style of play is one that none of the core players are used to having to mesh with. Mike Brown’s rotations are still erratic and while he’s trying to zero in on who should be playing come playoff time, the players he wants in the game aren’t necessarily performing well enough when they’re called upon.

What can happen, though, is the team playing harder and getting back to basics on both sides of the ball. The defense has been slipping and that’s effort and focus related. The same can be said about the rebounding. The offense, despite aesthetics, has actually taken a big step forward with Sessions on board so while we’d like things to look better, it’s more a matter of refining and finding a way to mesh better than an actual overhaul. If Brown can settle on a rotation and get his key players a bit more rest this team can get back on track. That’s certainly a realistic goal, whether it happens or not remains to be seen.

The Hornets Coming in: Right now, the Hornets are a M.A.S.H. unit. Their best two players (Gordon and Okafor) have been and remain injured while their next two best players (Jack and Ariza) are nicked up. Add in Kaman’s flu and Ayon being away from the team for the birth of a child and this team was missing 6 key rotation players in their last game. But, even though missing these guys has made it difficult to win games, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for this franchise. The more losses this team accumulates the more ping pong balls they get in the upcoming draft lottery. As the old NBA saying goes, you have to get worse to get better and this year the Hornets definitely fit this mold. Give credit to their head coach Monty Williams, though. He’s not letting injuries or missing players affect his team’s preparation or effort level. He’s got them playing hard and as competitively as possible. With a better, healthier roster who knows how good this team could be under his guidance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be in the mix for a bottom seed in the playoffs.

Hornets Blogs: Hornets 24/7 is a great site, check them out. Also give a visit to At The Hive for more Hornets coverage.

Keys to game: How competitive this game is will be dependent on who’s available to play for the Hornets. If Ariza, Kaman, Ayon, and Jack are able to suit up this team is sneakily good enough to hang with a lot of rosters. If they’re not, they become one of the worst – if not the worst – rosters in the league.

Either way, though, the Lakers need to attack this team with ball movement and quick decisions. As they showed in the 1st quarter of the OKC game, when the Lakers move the ball inside-out and from side to side they can cripple a defense because their talent level in the post and on the wing is too good for most teams. Today, they need to recapture that mode of attack to make a hustling Hornets’ defense scramble all over the court.

To accomplish this, the ball must move. When Bynum catches the ball in the post he must make quicker shot/pass decisions. Drew has been excellent at scoring the ball and overpowering his man but he’s also been too willing to hold the ball in order to get his shot and that’s meant less ball movement and more standing. In essence, he’s looked a like a post up version of the Kobe that draws ire as a ball stopper.

Speaking of Kobe, he must find his shot soon or become more of a facilitator. To help him get easier baskets the Lakers must look for him on curls and weak side duck-in’s so he can get shots going to the rim where he’s not actively having to work off the dribble to create for himself. To aid in this, Kobe must do his work off the ball with smart movement – he must set up his screens and time his cuts a bit better. In watching him work off the ball in recent games that pep in his step hasn’t been there and it’s allowed his defender to body him off picks and make his catches harder, pushing him farther from the basket to do his work.

Defensively, all I’m looking for is more effort. Mike Brown’s defensive system isn’t that complex. He runs a hedge/recover scheme in the P&R and the back end rotations are straight forward. However, he asks his players to cover a lot of ground and that means they must be active and hustling at all times. Lately, this hasn’t been the case. Players are doing a lot of pointing and asking another man to rotate for them. Shots aren’t being contested with the same vigor they were earlier in the season. With the defense scrambling more but not hustling as much, the rebounding has suffered. If the Lakers simply go harder for longer, these issues can be rectified. I understand the minutes have piled up. I also understand that disjointed offense can lead to players not going after it on defense all the time. But, the guys need to push through those things and get back to playing defense.

Bad habits have been setting in lately and today’s game offers a good chance to move away from them and get back on track. The Lakers are talented enough to make a run in the post-season but not talented enough that they can’t try give effort and still win. Settling for the easy play won’t get it done for this team and doing so will only lead to disappointment long term. Today, they have the chance to break out of the malaise that’s hurt them this past week. Here’s hoping they do.

Where you can watch: 12:30PM start time on Fox Sports West. Also listen at ESPN Radio 710AM.

The quality of the offenses the Lakers are seeing now is very different from that of the season’s early stages. At this point, opposing teams have had a good amount of time to get in shape and regain their form, and work on things like how they space the floor, time their cuts, and execute their sets.

I think LA’s defense will round into form once it becomes accustomed to this level of competition. Brown does know defense.

There is some lag in the offensive department, but the front office replaced our old sparkplug with a new one, and there’s a month’s time to fine tune the engine.

#1. Yes, because changing the entire nature of the offense and handing the keys to the guy that was acquired a week ago and away from the leader of the team that’s been key to 5 championships is easy. Because changing the lineups and rotations to the point that guys who haven’t played will now play prominent roles and guys that had key roles go the bench is easy. Yes, none of these things have the potential of causing any issues at all and should go over swimmingly.

Ignoring how the changes you’ve suggested could negatively impact the team and saying that they’re “easy” is disingenuous and is why I’m happy fans don’t make coaching decisions (or make personnel decisions).

#3 in response, when you have ineffective players, you need to change lineups and rotations. There was no hint in my suggested easy changes that all “should go over swimmingly.” The point is that the status quo is not working. Anyone can see that. OKC was simply toying with the Lakers. Down 12, there wasn’t a hint of worry because they knew they weren’t threatened, and on the road no less.

Re: “changing the entire nature of the offense”, that already happened with the elimination of all vestiges of the triangle. Since everyone (hopefully) agrees that ball movement is key to good offense, one would be silly indeed to suggest that having Sessions walk the ball over half court and throw the ball to Kobe and Bynum and then just watch is somehow enlightened and will get us through OKC and the West.

KB24 is playing heavy, heavy minutes and it shows in his shooting %. One can continue to do something that is not working, or one can make changes and hope for a better outcome. I wasn’t ignoring negative impacts. I was suggesting easy changes that could be implemented to change the course the Lakers are now on. Whether or not they would be positive is unknown until they are tried.

It is a little late to play Ebanks, but there is nothing unreasonable about suggesting that Goudelock and Hill get to play. Blake and Murphy are both 31 years old, both are very marginal, and we are 51 games in. Blake is a 10 MPG guy at this point in his career. Here is the 82games.com lineup data again:

#4. My point is that, the things you suggest aren’t “easy” by any means. I’m not saying they’re not options to consider or that they can’t be good for the team in the long run. But to ignore the potential fallout of these decisions and imply that they’re easy changes is, again, disingenuous. I said there aren’t any easy answers and you said that you totally disagree. So, I’m looking for an explanation about how any of these suggested changes are easy.

And, for what it’s worth, I think Goudelock should play a bit more. I’m working on a lineups post to try and see if there are mixes of players that have shown they can have a positive impact on the game. But, at this point in the season, I think all change will be hard to some extent.

goudelock can’t play pg. he doesn’t handle ball pressure very well, and you don’t want to gift opposing 2nd units with points-off-turnovers.

that being said, i’d like him to get in there for 2-4 minutes a game, and nibble away at kobe’s minutes at SG. if he plays poorly, not a big deal. if he plays well, extend his minutes and buy kobe more rest.

#6, I concede the point that “answers” means “answers that will work.”

Instead of “totally disagree” I should have said, “Perhaps these aren’t answers, but here are easy changes that could be implemented today that have a high likelihood of procuring positive results IMO.”

Here is another:

5. Play Barnes more minutes with Sessions as they seem to play very well off of each other, e.g., instead of bringing Blake off the bench to sub for Sessions in Q1, bring Barnes off the bench to sub for Kobe (the man needs more rest!).

Sessions plays well with Barnes, because Sessions can find open man , and Barnes can run, cut to the basket. GLock and Ebanks should play more because they run, shoot the ball. Coaches always said that you beat team with ball movement. Lakers FO and Mike Brown believe this Lakers team can win championship this year, so they don’t give young players a chance to play, but if you have Sessions and you don’t know how to choose a group of players who can run with him, you don’t take an advantage of a PG.

Lakers are last in the league at forcing turnovers at 11.7 per game (Orlando is 29th at 13.1 opp turnover) while turning over the ball 15.3 per game which is 19th in the league. Lakers opponents are averaging 16.3 points per game off of Lakers turnovers while the Lakers average 12.2 points per game off of turnovers. Lakers lose 4 points per game off of their turnovers.

Lakers cannot afford to give opponents easy turnovers as they have the worst turnover differential in the league. Opponents have scored 205 more points off of Lakers turnovers than the Lakers have scored off of their opponents turnovers.

Of the next 7 games, 5 of them are against non-playoff teams. The other 2 games are against a 4 seed and a 7 seed. I am gonna go out on a limb and predict a 6-1 stretch here. However even if we go 6-1, I will still have the team rated the same as now (“6th” best). However the 6-1 record should send the forum pendulum into a full optimistic swing : )

Darius is right… Just because it’s the right thig to do does not mean its the easiest thing to do. In fact there is probably a negative coorilation there. But it’s obvious to everyone that has ever watched basketball that the best course of action is for your PG to run a traditional offense. It’s just the way basketball is played.

Something tells me Jack won’t go for a season high today as he did against Fisher a couple weeks ago.

“The Hornets Coming in: Right now, the Hornets are a M.A.S.H. unit. Their best two players (Gordon and Okafor) have been and remain injured while their next two best players (Jack and Ariza) are nicked up. Add in Kaman’s flu and Ayon being away from the team for the birth of a child and this team was missing 6 key rotation players in their last game.” Darius.

I agree completely, why not it’s so obvious. This is a bad team with a lot of injuries & not a lot of motivation to win. So to me, in my eyes, a simple win by the Lakers is not enough. No, I’m not saying they have to blow the Hornets out, but I do believe the Lakers should be able to win this game w/o Kobe or Gasol playing more than 33 minutes. Is that to much to ask? Once again, the Hornets, a last place team when healthy, may be missing 6 of the regular 8 rotation players. Mike, Kobe, let’s think of the BIG picture.

Kobe & Gasol are the OLDEST two players in the top 20 players in terms of minutes played per game this season. And Joe Johnson is the only other player on that list 30 years of age or older.

Darius is correct. It is too late for dramatic change, which includes those of you who want Kobe to submit to hypnosis to change his on the court demeaner. We are what we are. We have to hope we get hot and other teams go cold. I think MB will be able to execute that plan quite nicely : )

The answers are easy but implementing them are not. Very difficult to take the ball away from Kobe and bench veteran pkayers that have played the whole year for us albeit at a D League level (Blake, McBob, Murphy)

Well there went that 14 pt. lead. And Kobe starts the game 0-5. I’m not surprised by either. In fact, I’ll be more surprised if Kobe ever has another 50% shooting game the rest of his career. Unbelievable how someone can’t forget how to shoot…

Kobe Alert: He did eclipse J West for #7 all time FTA’s. He needs 4 more dimes today to pass Dave Bing for #41 on that list. He is only 26 points ahead of Durant + is definately an underdog for the scoring title.

great job by Blake in the second. after those two terrible turnovers in a row, he put in 3 3s in a row. if he gets his confidence back up and starts hitting his 3s, Blake will be a good rotation guy for this squad.

I ask that commenters not use profanity and avoid posting variations of the same comment over and over again. We get it, you don’t like (insert the name of person X here). We don’t need to read it multiple times each thread. Even the game thread. Thanks.

@Kevin
it definitely is not ideal for him to be playing that many minutes, but i havent noticed any decline in his lift or his push. he is struggling, but i havent seen y thats connected to his minutes.

Bynum and Pau are post up guys also, so they take up time in there. Pau is going off today and Bynum gets an auto double team every time he touches the ball. they should get majority of touches.

case in point, kobe was wide open 2 feet from basket and missed the putback. legs looked ok, he just missed.

Status quo is not working, hasn’t worked (with MB) and won’t work. How many minutes did Sessions get with Barnes in the first half? How many times were plays run for Bynum, who is being covered by scrubs? I mean, it isn’t really that difficult, so let’s stop trying to make this “rocket science.” Kobe needs to sit and rest. It is obvious. But, then, what do I know?

#65, you may want to take a gander at the standings. We are only 4 games out of 9th place, and struggling with one of the worst teams in the league without 4 starters, at home. In other words, not working.

No, seriously Kobe has not shot well since the nose injury. Remember how he was playing prior to the ASG and even during the ASG. His shooting woes started after that, we attributed it to the mask. But, maybe there is some underlying problem that hasn’t been addressed.

Hard to see the Lakers advancing out of the first round, and a championship is entirely out of the question.

There will likely be an all out push to trade Pau this summer. At $19 million, he’s simply not worth the money. Not sure that he’s worth that to anybody else, but certainly not to a Laker team where he is a third option. This team needs significant improvement this summer, and there’s no way to do that with the current salary structure. The current roster is just much too devoid of talent to be a legitimate contender.

The fact that some on this board offer up the “we’re third in the west” defense is merely evidence of how far we’ve fallen. Third in the west, with a minimum of two vastly superior teams in the east means that this team is, under an unlikely best case scenario, the 5th best team in the league. That translates to a 2nd round loss–best case. Match up against Memphis earlier than that and they could be out in round 1.

Hey Aaron-
I wasn’t knockin’ the move at all just to let you know. That was fantastic footwork and he got fouled a bit to boot, but yeah Shaq woulda dunked it

I think that when a team is this old, that we cannot be front-runners. We’re going to have to come together in the playoffs, and it just comes down to whether or not you think we can do that. I think that with the right matchup we can go far. I think that this team can beat the bulls or the Heat. The only problem is getting out of the West.

Btw… Blake almost lost the game. He hedged too hard and fast and made Barnes have to bak off Jack and pick up Blake’s man. Because of that Jack blew by Blake and thank goodness for us he missed a wide open lay up.

i think that we should not expect a title this year because even management dont. If Buss et al wanted us to go on another title run they would have kept the triangle, kept Odom, hired Brian Shaw and tinkered around the edges. It was clear that with the hiring of Brown and attempted Paul trade that they wanted to completly change the makeup of the team without tanking which i expect to continue in the summer with the trading of Pau. They must have know that it would take more than a shortened year to do so and thus dont expect Buss to consider this year a faliure if we dont win

James: The problem is that the FO did not do “everything” they could to win this year – IMO – Darius : ) We did not use the TPEs, after dumping LO’s salary, + we did not re-sign Shannon. If we had done this as a “plan” as you are stating, then we did not do that well either. You can consiously position yourself like Cuban is doing. We clearly did not do that, as we traded our picks, + we are old and expensive.